Fields and the perfect Franco-Vietnamese marriage

Ngo Bao Chau, an authentic Vietnamese name, was pronounced at Hyderabad in India last Wednesday (August 19th) as one of the four winners of the Fields medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics (we could say that this is the Nobel of mathematics). His works deal with the Langlands programme (I will let you discover on your own what it is about 🙂 ).Vietnam is therefore the second Asian country to have won this medal, after Japan. Less than 50 people have been awarded this medal since its creation in 1936. This is a national pride for the Vietnamese people who are also trying to assert themselves on today’s international stage and not just through the painful war victories they obtained in the past.We cannot forget France, hence the title of this post, where Bao Chau carried out most of his research work at the Paris-Sud University under the supervision of Gérard Laumon who had another student who won the Fields medal in 2002 (Laurent Lafforgue)!Vietnam gave Bao Chau the necessary knowledge for his start, while France offered him wings to fly as high as possible. The precious grey matter does not belong to a single people, but to the entire humanity. Pentalog’s restricted case also proves that projects of worldwide clients can easily be carried out by French, Romanian, Moldovan or Vietnamese teams. It is from this diversity and internationalization that stems Pentalog’s strength, because we can draw the greatest assets from everyone.My only regret is that the entire French press only mentioned Bao Chau as being French! He is first of all Vietnamese and was only naturalized in 2010.PS: I take a small personal pride in having had the chance to attend the same primary and secondary school as Bao Chau 🙂